Bob the Skull
by bookgodess15
Summary: Harry wakes up after his battle with Justin, and discovers a talking skull in the rubble of his old teacher's house. What will come when a Warden shows up?


**Author's Note: **Okay, this is my first and probably last piece in the Dresden Files fandom. If I were to do anything more with it, I think I'd continue this piece all the way through Harry's trial and his life with Ebenezer. Um... but for right now, it's just a one-shot. I think it's kind of sad that nobody posts here in the Dresden fandom, because I really do love these books. A roaring ficdom would have been nearly intoxicating... but I guess not. Anyways, enjoy!**  
**

**Bob the Skull**

I'd like to think that it was my innate sense of survival that woke me up, but it was not. It was the coughing that was shaking my entire body—coughs as sharp, burning scents clogged my nostrils and the back of my throat. Another cough made me bang my head against something hard, but the stinging in my nose lessened for a moment. My whole body ached, and my right foot felt even more awful as invisible hands smashed it with invisible hammers. Whatever I'd done this time, Justin would have to-

Justin.

My eyes shot open, and I stared straight up at the starry night sky. Off to my right, a charred column that had once been the chimney loomed precariously, and all around me I could hear the whispers of gentle fires and the occasional snap as the heat became too much for another piece of wood. I sat up, ignoring the swing of nausea that belted me in the stomach as I did so.

I was sitting in what used to be the hallway. The last thing I remembered was in the living room, so I must have been thrown pretty far at the blast. This was verified by my back, which felt like someone was running a jackhammer up and down it. I must have flown backwards through the wall... ouch.

The house had been badly burned. There was a clear epicenter in the living room, where only the fireplace stood as a marker as to what the room had once been. The damage extended all the way to the opposite corner of the house, which I could see clearly due to the lack of walls any higher than two feet. At the other end of the house, the back wall of the kitchen stood in a surreal sort of way, with the white refrigerator and the microwave still white and barely damaged. The bottoms of the curtains on either side of the kitchen window were slightly burned, but that was the most damage to be seen on the lonely piece of house. The second floor had obviously caved in, and I had been lucky enough to land in the hallway, where there was no floor above me. Had I stayed in the living room, I would have been subjected to a hail of falling wood and cement.

And I probably wouldn't have survived.

There was black smoke hanging around the house like a fog, a fog made of tar and ink and the most rotten smells in the world. As I stood up, though, I rose above it—it turned out that the smoke was only about two feet off of the ground, and only rose up another foot before dispersing into chilly night air. Looking around me, I saw a man's legs sticking up in an awkward sort of way, and a small, blackened pot sitting upside-down, askew the center of the living room.

"_Why you making that in the living room?" _

_Elaine looked up at me, her wide eyes heavy-lidded with exhaustion that was probably a result of her illness. She had, after all, stayed home from school for the past two weeks. "Justin said so," she muttered, returning to her work._

"_What are you making?" I asked, trying to get more life out of her. Why the devil was she up brewing a potion when she was supposed to be sick, anyway?_

"_Potion," she said, her voice not carrying a smart ass tone at all. _

"_What for?" I asked, trying to determine what ingredients she out before her, but they were all in tiny, dark jars that didn't have labels._

"_Harry! Get back in here and finish the dishes!" Justin called, his voice rough and pissed off._

Around my neck, I could feel the familiar weight of my mother's pentacle necklace. It was silver, and it hung on the outside of my t-shirt as a result of tonight. Normally, I wore on the inside; what normal teenage boy wore a damned necklace? But it was a good tool, good for balance and good for faith. Justin had spoke of the usefulness of rings and bracelets, but there had been no way I was going to walk around with a ring on my finger or a bracelet on my wrist—there were enough rumors going around due to my apparent lack of interest in girls.

Now, I didn't know whether a ring and a bracelet would have been my saving or my undoing. Could I trust that a ring would store up kinetic energy every time you moved, or was in another lie of Justin's? I didn't know what to trust anymore. After tonight, everyone felt like a suspect and every shadow hid a demon. I might have been jumpy, paranoid as a squirrel who's found himself a nut, but my body just hurt too much. Right now, I had all my weight balanced on my left side, and it would have to stay that way until I found something to act as a crutch.

Justin had taught me a technique to block out pain, to force my mind to concentrate on other matters, but I didn't want to employ anything I'd ever learned from Just right now. It had all been a lie—everything out of his mouth had been lies.

"_Harry, come here!" _

_I had luckily just finished drying the last dish, and hurriedly shoved it into the cupboard with a loud clank, as it fell on top of a stack of already dried plates. I slammed the door to the cupboard shut with more force than necessary in my rush to get into the living room. I threw the towel haphazardly into the sink and bounded out of the kitchen on my long legs, until I arrived in the living room._

_Justin and Elaine were both in dark brown robes made of heavy cloth, and Justin's hood was up, casting dark, lean shadows across his face—Elaine's was down._

"_Don't I get to be a Jedi, too?" I cracked weakly, a little scared of the atmosphere that had been created in the usually homely living room._

"_Harry, do you remember what I taught you about discipline?" Justin asked, his voice strange. Each syllable sounded separated, delicate... pronounced._

"_Yeah. Elaine, what's going on?" I asked, my eyes flicking to her as I felt the first lickings of fear in the bottom of my stomach. Elaine did not respond, however. She kept staring down at the ground, her hair hanging down on either side of her head like great curtains on either side of a stage. Her grey eyes were shadowed in the darkness cast by her hair._

I gave up standing after about two minutes. I got down on my knees, and began hunting the area around me for a stick, some sort of rod or other thing that I could use to support myself and get out of this place. There was nothing within arm's reach—but, as luck would have it, there was a three-foot peg from the old banister. Ten freaking feet away.

The rubble was still warm, but the harder part soon became the charred, sharp edges of everything around me. I crawled with more caution than I thought was possible. My palms were already raw and blackened, but slipping my way through burned wreckage tore one open one of my palms, and put a few good bruises on the other one. My ankle, which I was beginning to think was broken and not just sprained, was dragged through various obstacles as I crawled on my knees.

A blackened object that might have once been... an end table, maybe, pushed my ankle about five inches out, and the explosion of pain that I felt rocked my whole body, and my vision darkened for a moment. Out of reflex, my mind grabbed at the pain and stuffed it into that tiny, locked up part of my mind where it would hold for a while. The darkness disappeared, and the majority of the pain in my ankle went with it.

A moment later, I remembered that it was Justin's trick. It was Justin's teaching, Justin's lies that were invading my mind and deceiving my body like a black smoke, like the black smoke that swirled around my knees and my chest. I froze amongst the ruin, wondering if I should undo it. Now, I had mobility and the ability to think without the distraction of pain—but it was Justin's spell. His filth still loitering about my mind. I couldn't let that happen, I wouldn't be controlled by him. Ever.

"_Elaine!" I screamed as the last words of the binding spell left her mouth. My mouth shut itself as a heavy weight descended upon my entire body, slowing down my thoughts as well as my physical motions. Elaine turned away from me and faced Justin._

"_Is the potion finished blending?" Justin asked as I lay on the floor, a useless lump._

_Elaine nodded._

"_Pour it into a flask and then bring it here," Justin instructed. Elaine turned and walked away from me, but Justin turned to face me. "I'm sorry, Harry. It really is what's best for you—enthralling is really quite a learning experience, if you want to look at it that way. Imagine all that you'll know when this is all over, and I can let you out."_

_I tried to tell him to shut up. I really did—I tried to move my mouth, twist my face in disgust and stare him in the eyes, but all that happened was a small noise in the back of my throat and a twitch in my nose. _

As easy as it had been to lock away the pain, it was fifty times harder to undo it. Justin had never taught me how to take apart the walls of a pain lock. I reached against it and felt around, looking around the magical walls of my pain box for a snag, a tear, any imperfection in my creation. There had to be something—it had all been so hastily erected that there was no way it could be perfect. It felt smooth and cold, as if it were made of iron, but the touch of iron didn't normally fill me with an icy dread in my stomach, or made my skin tingle. It wasn't cold because it was made of iron; it was cold because of the pain that was locked inside of it. My stomach twisted as I thought of bringing back that pain, but I swallowed and grabbed at the box with a renewed vigor.

Then I found it—a small crack, tiny, where the lining of the spell hadn't quite lined up correctly. I pushed my magic inside the fault and then pulled with all the energy I could muster. It was cold, so cold all over my body as I applied even more energy to the miniscule crevice, trying to pull the box apart. It was strong and cold, and I cursed my magical prowess angrily. But on the other hand, I _was_ getting somewhere. Pain was leaking back into my body. The aches and pains that had disappeared from my back and my torn palm were starting to beat back to life, and all I could think to do was grit my teeth against it all and keep pushing harder. The box was coming apart faster, and it became easier and harder to push as the pain got worse. It was seeping out; the agony was washing into my body, and after my brief reprieve, the stabbing and the burning seemed fifty times worse.

Then all of a sudden, my box, which had been slowly unraveling up until now, exploded with a force that made me see white. Hot, sharp pain came down upon me like a train crashing into my body, and I screamed.

_Justin held the potion in one hand and a bronze athame in the other. The metal knife seemed to glow with a bluish light. Elaine stood by his side, her hands folded and her head bowed slightly. Obediently._

_I wasn't concentrating on her, though. I was busy tearing away at the binding spell Elaine had placed me under. It was strong, but I was stronger. Already, I had managed to rip the spell at the edges, making frayed and not so tightly stretched around me. Time was running out, and my heart beat like a trapped rabbit's as I saw Justin raise the blue-lit blade of the athame. Panic erupted inside of me as if a star had just exploded, and the spell shattered in a bright flash of light._

_Justin stumbled backwards, caught by surprise at my sudden escape, and I pushed myself off of the ground, kicking away the salt that had formed a circle around me. I took all the emotions, every ounce of fear and anger and hurt, and shoved it all into a ball._

"_Ventas Severitis!" I bellowed, forcing the ball of emotions out into the powerful gust of wind that knocked Justin over on his back. I stood there with power rushing through me as I took in the fact that I had broken free. _

Now I had no defense against the pounding pain in my ankle, my back, my head, my palm... Justin had betrayed me, Elaine had betrayed me... the house that had been my home for six years now lay in a black, smoking pile... I couldn't help the few tears that slid down my face; when I tried to wipe them away with my left hand—the one that wasn't torn—they were too dirty to do much more than smudge my face even more. Miserable, I closed my hand around the cool silver of my mother's pentacle and choked back a sob.

"It could be worse," I told myself. "You could've... not survived. Justin could've killed you—or worse, enthralled you."

"Hey, at least you would have been alive."

My head jerked up and looked around wildly, searching for the source of the voice. I'd never heard it before; it wasn't Justin, and it certainly wasn't Elaine. It was male, and it sounded a hell of a lot more cheerful than felt proper amongst these smoking ruins.

"Who are you?" I demanded, wishing that my sixteen-year-old vocal cords could sound a little more intimidating and not as if I were a three-year-old recovering from a tantrum.

"The more important question is: _who _are _you_?" the voice said in a mockingly sage voice.

I looked around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. It was close to the ground, somewhere nearby, but I couldn't see anything nearby. Though if they were using a glamour there was no way I'd be able to see them without opening my Sight, and I really, really didn't want to look around at the ruined house with my Sight. All of that black magic, the death of Justin and Elaine... An involuntary shudder went down my spine as I thought of how it would look.

"Come out!" I commanded, wincing as my voice cracked in my attempts to sound authoritative. "Show yourself!" I said, trying to repair the damage I'd just done.

"Yes, perhaps I'll just use my imaginary arms and my invisible legs. Hold on a minute while I get that together." The voice was sarcastic, biting, and yet somehow still jovial.

"What are you?" I asked, unable to keep a tremor of fear out from trickling into my voice. To comfort myself, and perhaps even distract myself, I looked down and poured a little bit of will, and my mother's pentacle necklace began to glow with a warm light. I looked up, feeling somewhat comforted in the darkness, against this voice.

"I'm an air spirit, a spirit of knowledge. I'm also stuck inside of this freaking skull, which is underneath something heavy. Wanna give me a hand? I could use two, but I guess one will do."

"Where are you?" I asked, feeling better now that my thoughts had some distraction from the pain in my ankle and my back.

"Well, DuMorne used to keep me in his lab, and he got to that through some door behind a tapestry. I think there might have been a hallway on the other side... dunno. There's something _really_ heavy on top of me."

I got up on my knees, looking around the demolished hallway and trying to determine where the heavy, woven tapestry had once been hung in the hallway. If you figured that I had come out of the living room from about... there-ish, flow straight through the hallway, which meant that the tapestry would have been... _there_. About three feet away.

"Okay," I said. I got down on my hands again and began crawling towards where I thought the tapestry used to be, this time taking a little extra care to not bump my ankle. "Okay, I'm going to come and get you."

"What's your name?" the voice asked, the curiosity sounding so innocent and unassuming.

"One-" I paused to grit my teeth as my ankle gave a particularly nasty throb, "minute." I was almost there. "Talk to me."

"Once upon a midnight dreary; as I pondered weak and-"

"Something a little more cheerful, perhaps?" I groused. But despite my complaining, I felt myself cheering up slightly. I felt lighter, falling into an oddly familiar routine of friendly banter like Elaine and I had once-

No. No, I wouldn't think about her.

"It's a small world after all! _It's a small world after all!_" the voice sang, full of rambunctious spirit and the teensiest hint of sarcastic mockery.

I sighed, figuring that it was better than _The Raven_, and continued to crawl forward and tried to ignore the song. Working through the rubble was a painstaking process, especially with my aching back and my pounding head, but I refused to use Justin's little mind tricks again. As I got closer to the kitchen (or where there had once been a kitchen) and farther away from the living room, I began to see evidence of the pottery that had been in the hallway. In fact, I first noticed it when I tore open the left leg of my pants on a piece of a broken ceramic pot. After that, I was more careful not to get into any, for fear of inflicting further injury to myself.

"_It's a world of hope and a world of fear; there's so much that we share, that it's time we're aware-_"

I lifted up a particularly large beam of wood, and underneath was a white, human skull. Its mouth had been merrily singing away, but when I pulled up the piece of wood, it shut up.

"Is that you?" it asked, its mouth opening and closing in synch with its words.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's me." I lifted the skull up off of the ground, and nearly dropped it when I saw two orange dots in either eye of the skull, staring at me like the headlights of a car. "Uh, hi." What do you say to a talking skull, anyways?

"And _hello_ to you too, brother!" he said in a southern drawl. "S'been too long since I seen ya, my brother."

"My name's Harry," I told the skull. "Harry Dresden."

"Harry. You're one of the wizards DuMorne was raising? Thought he had himself another one," the skull said lightly.

"She's... not here right now," I said with some difficulty. "What's your name?" Change of subject—gee, not too obvious or anything.

"Name? Oh, I don't have a name. I'm just a spirit of knowledge; sort of like a walking, talking encyclopedia. Without the walking part," the skull said, not sounding at all bothered by this.

"What do people call you? I mean, they don't come up to you and say: 'Oh Great Spirit of Knowledge', do they?" I asked, still confused and still a little unnerved that I was talking to a skull.

"I only work for my Master," the skull informed him.

"Oh," I said intelligently. "Who's your Master?"

"Well, it used to be DuMorne. Now that you've gotten rid of him, I guess it's you," the skull said merrily, as if things such as apprentices killing their masters happened twice a day.

_The living room was in shambles. Most of the furniture was on fire by now—that was my fault—and many of the decorations had fallen to the ground and broken. There were spatters of blood on the back wall from the athame that I had pulled on Justin, before he'd melted it with an intensely white-hot fire. Sweat was pouring down my forehead and into my eyes, making them burn and tear up, but I no longer cared. All that mattered was that I finally had the upper hand._

_Justin was laying on the ground, weakly muttering something under his breath. Hoping that he hadn't gathered too much momentum in whatever spell he was quickly forming, I kicked him in the mouth to put an end to it. But instead of shutting him up, he started speaking louder and I felt myself panicking. _

"_Forzare!" I screamed, and a column of fire as thick as a pop can erupted out of my palm and hit Justin... or would have. Instead, there was a great big explosion along with a great blazing of fire, and I felt myself flying backwards, and then there was a darkness that descended upon me as I heard a man's screams of agony just before silence won out._

"You—you don't mind that I killed Justin?" I asked, feeling a little relieved. I was already starting to feel a little uneasy about all of this; what was going to happen to me now? I was still underage, I couldn't support myself now.

"It isn't my place to care. Besides, just between you and me, that guy was _bad_ news," the skull said in a conspiring tone, as if he were granting me permission to hear some great, elusive secret.

"Yeah, I know. He tried to enthrall me about two hours ago," I said dryly, even though it still hurt to say the words out loud.

"He did?" the skull asked. He sounded shocked, and his orange lights got wide, which I supposed was about as close as he could get to widening his eyes in surprise.

"Yeah. That's why he and I dueled—I broke free of his binding spell, and he didn't like that very much."

"Were there any witnesses that could testify to that?" the skull asked.

"Why?" I demanded. "Am I going to get in some sort of trouble? I'll just tell the police that there was a fire and I just managed to get out in time or something. Nobody's going to know that me and Justin went at it. Besides, even if I told them the truth, who the hell would believe it?"

"Well, you see Harry, there's this thing called the White Council-"

Just then, in a blinding flash of white light, a figure in a grey and hooded robe appeared on the ground. They stood there for a moment, and I think that they were taking in the smoking scene, but then they snapped into action.

"Halt! Don't move!"

I didn't. As if I could have run with my busted ankle, anyways.

The figure came towards me at a run, bounding through the destroyed house and reaching me in a matter of seconds. Up close, I saw the outline of a human face underneath the hood of the cloak, but I could not see any distinct features.

"Where is Wizard DuMorne?" the figure asked in a hard voice, that promised much pain if I didn't answer promptly. But me, being me, didn't have time to answer his question. I was busy trying to figure out who this person was.

"Who are you?" I asked, not letting myself show the fact that my ankle hurt and that my head felt as if somebody was squeezing my head. "Why do you want to know?"

"I am a Warden of the White Council," the robed figure said. "Why are you here?"

"I'm Harry Dresden, Justin's apprentice," I defended myself immediately. "I lived here."

"And where is Wizard DuMorne?" the Warden asked impatiently.

I looked down at the ground, my gaze lingering on my mother's silver pentacle amulet for a moment. It was still glowing peacefully and provided the only light that there was in the whole area, save for the glowing embers where the fire had finally died.

"He's dead. He tried to enthrall me tonight. I broke free of his binding spell before he could get to me, and then he engaged me in a duel. I won."

The Warden snorted, and I didn't take it as a good sign. He was obviously a powerful wizard, and I was already exhausted and injured. I didn't stand a chance if he decided to kill me tonight. "You won in a battle against Justin DuMorne?" he asked scornfully. "You're just a fledgling."

"I did!" I protested. "His body's over there if you don't believe me!" I gestured towards the body angrily.

"Can I trust you not to run?" the Warden asked, in a voice that clearly said he couldn't.

"Yes," I said stubbornly. "I think my ankle's broken." I jabbed my thumb back at my foot, which had thankfully begun to purple and swell by now.

"What is that?" the Warden asked suspiciously, glaring down at the skull that I was still holding in my hand, instead of leaving me in peace to go and examine the dead body of my teacher.

"It's a spirit of knowledge," I said defensively. "Look, I didn't so anything wrong! All I did was defend myself against some insane guy who wanted to enslave me!"

"I'll have you come with me," the Warden said. "And you will leave that spirit here."

"No I won't!" I said immediately. "He's my friend, he's going to come with me."

"He?" the Warden asked speculatively. "A spirit is not a being with a gender or a personality."

"Yeah," I said with no small amount of teenage attitude. "Well, this one does. He's mine and his name is Bob."

"Very well then," the Warden said heavily, as if he had just agreed to do his own taxes as well as his worst enemy's. "Bring it with you."

I shoved the skull underneath my armpit tightly, feeling like it was my only lifeline in this new, confusing situation. "What about my ankle?" I asked.

The Warden sighed. "Don't you know any pain management skills?" he asked in exasperation. "It _was_ one of Justin's specialties."

I bit my lip as I realized that he expected me to use Justin's mind-locking technique that I had just told myself I would never, ever use. "I can't," I said and tried to make it sound as honest possible.

The Warden's patience snapped, and it muttered something harsh and guttural. My wrists snapped together and a sharp shock went through my body, and I would have screamed in pain if I'd been able to move. Instead, my body seemed to lock up and my vision went completely black. I felt like a hard wind was rushing around me, and a roaring filled my ears as I tried to get a grip on myself, but I couldn't until I was roughly slammed down onto the floor of somewhere. The roaring wind disappeared, I felt able to move again, and my vision was slowly returning.

Around me were three grey, cinderblock walls, and a fourth wall comprised entirely of heavy, one-inch thick iron bars. There was a set of bunk beds with two mattresses, each about one inch thick and stained with fluids whose origins I really didn't want to know. Against the opposite wall was a urinal. I was in a freaking prison cell.

"Like I was saying about the White Council..."

I jumped out of my stupor, where I had been staring at my surroundings with a sort of stunned feeling, and discovered that the skull had, indeed, been allowed to come with me.

"Shut up, Bob," I snapped, feeling irritated with the whole goddamn mess.

"Bob," the skull chortled. "You couldn't have picked something a little more... original? Like Jerry? Or Harold?"

"Harold the Skull?" I asked dubiously, feeling my annoyance fade.

"Hey, well, it sort of grows on you..." the skull said. "But out of all the names that you could have picked, it had to be _Bob_?!"

"Bob the Skull," I declared. "I think it fits you."

"Bob the Skull," he grumbled, but I think that secretly he sort of liked it. His orange lights of eyes sort of twinkled. "Well, I suppose..."

Something about the spirit agreeing with my name for him just suddenly made it final. I still had one friend left in this sad, strange little world of mine, and his name was Bob. A human skull that was entrapping a spirit of knowledge was going to stick by me through thick and thin, no matter what happened to me in this... White Council business. It was comforting to know that no matter what, I wouldn't be alone.


End file.
